Lunchbox labour is back — here’s how Canada’s new school food program can grow

Jennifer Black, Rachel Engler-Stringer, University of British Columbia, University of Saskatchewan

The grind of packing school lunches is returning for many families this fall. Ensuring children’s access to nutritious food at school is a daily act of care that fuels their learning, nutritional well-being and sense of connection.

But this essential work takes a toll on caregivers and family budgets.

Read more: ‘So much mental load’: Mothers speak about school lunches

Additional hurdles exist for food-insecure families whose children are twice as likely to report missing school lunch altogether.

School food has historically been the responsibility of individual families in Canada, deviating from most affluent countries with long histories of school-provided meals. But substantial changes are now underway following the 2024 launch of Canada’s first National School Food Policy and the National School Food Program.

As federal school food funding rolls out, developing rigorous, transparent and well-governed systems for collecting data and sharing lessons learned will be important. As school food scholars, we hope researchers, policymakers, schools and advocates can collaboratively nourish a culture of evidence-based policymaking to sustain programs into the future.

Food is a source of care, support

Our work documenting the rollout of new lunch programs in Canada finds that students talk about food as a source of care and support, with impacts on their school experience beyond the meals’ nutritional content.

Kids taught us that social relationships and care work are important but overlooked benefits of school lunch programs. Working closely with students also highlighted how important school food workers and trusted adults are.

The undervalued labour of lunch has been thoughtfully documented in the United States.

But in Canada, little scholarly or public attention underscores these important roles or addresses how to train, engage and document the impacts of lunch workers who provide the nutritious and locally adapted menus and caring dynamics needed for programs to thrive.

Read more: School lunches, the French way: It’s not just about nutrition, but togetherness and bon appetit

Ambitious vision

Canada now has an ambitious vision for improving access to school food. If done right, this would reduce food-related spending for families, improve children’s nutrition and learning outcomes, support local economies, promote sustainability and buffer children from hunger during school.

All territories, provinces and First Nations governments have signed bilateral funding agreements with the federal government to build or expand school food programs, with $1 billion committed for 2024-29.

The Coalition for Healthy School Food estimates that provinces, territories and municipal governments will kick in an extra $401 million annually as of 2025-26.

The federal government estimates that 80 per cent of schools now offer school food programs of some sort, a notable increase.

Canadian school food research

In April, multiple federal bodies committed a combined $12.6 million to launch grants to fund prospective proposals for research projects that assess the governance, policy delivery, and health and well-being impacts of school food programs.

These projects will build on a $1 million investment committed last year.

However, the proposals have been capped at only three years. That’s a very short time to study complex cross-national systems changes that will take years to ramp up, and even longer to measure long-term sustainability.

Ongoing research will be important, since school food researchers, the Coalition of Healthy School Food and federal government consultations have identified lack of data and governance structures as a key roadblock to progress.

Long-term data and surveillance systems are now needed to monitor program growth and changes related to things like:

• How many schools are offering food? Do they include full lunches or breakfasts or mainly snacks, every day or sporadically?
• Are nutritious, sustainable and culturally appropriate options offered?
• What does it cost? And who pays?
• What are the impacts on local employment and economies?
• How many students have access?
• What impacts and challenges ensue?

It will be important that governments and researchers involved in monitoring school food programs think carefully before making new asks of schools to develop research projects, especially if multiple research projects are trying to collect data from the same districts.

Need for co-ordination

School food in Canada is complex with multiple promising potential pathways to expansion. While schools are largely funded by provincial and territorial governments, the success of school food programs must also contend with local district governance and complex and changing local dynamics. These include:

• differences in food environments, including infrastructure like commercial-grade kitchens, storage and eating spaces;
• differing tastes, expectations and cultural and culinary norms;
• costs, staffing, leadership models, engagement with community partners and other supports;
• integration with school curriculum;
• competing local demands.

Many other challenges remain.

Researchers are eager to build on promising case studies and research about children’s dietary quality, food insecurity experiences, health and educational outcomes.

Schools who are interested in learning more about engaging in consistent and comparable evaluations of their school food programs to potentially feed into wider policy discussion can consult the recent Evaluation & Monitoring Guide on School Food Programs in Canada.

School Food Programs in Canada gives an overview of how different approaches to school food might impact communities, ranging from remote Indigenous communities to Canada’s biggest cities and rural areas.

Expanded collaboration needed

Interdisciplinary and new approaches to collaboration are needed so that researchers and practitioners (like teachers, school food activists, volunteers and anyone working to design, implement, improve or advocate for school food programs) who have knowledge of complex school food systems and local community can collaborate effectively.

Nutritional assessment specialists, economists, sustainability experts, educational and sociological researchers and Indigenous knowledge holders and story tellers and many others are also needed.

The Black School Food Working Group and the Indigenous School Food Circle are working to centre voices that are often marginalized in health research.

A multi-institutional school food research centre like others already existing in Canada, with a strong focus on community-academic partnerships, would ensure we don’t end up with research gaps and wasted efforts.

Researchers and policymakers must consider carefully which voices and community-based expertise are missing from research planning and dissemination, especially since barriers to participation remain.

For community-based expertise to enhance research development and sharing, it will be important that research takes this seriously and funds support this too.

Ongoing conversations about school food

In June, the first School Food for All Nourishing Futures conference convened over 500 school food champions, including educators and school food advocates, community leaders, researchers, public and health professionals for conversations about the future of school food and research.

Farm to Cafeteria Canada and the Coalition for Healthy School Food have proposed seeking paths towards a follow-up forum in future years.

Such gatherings and systems to co-ordinate and convene will be valuable additions to ensure that lessons learned from scholarship have avenues to directly be informed by and shared with schools and programs on the ground.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.